


at the edge

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alliances, Border Crossings, Desertion, Everything I write is an 03/Brotherhood fusion, Gen, Help From Unlikely Sources, My version of Marcoh is an 03/Brotherhood fusion, Treason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 14:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15687375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: Even with all the lives that ended under his hands, Tim Marcoh was never a fighter.





	at the edge

**Author's Note:**

> "here we're at the edge of everything we know. the highway leads home."  
> \- Diane Tullson

The border between Ishval and Amestris is well guarded. Marcoh remembers when it wasn’t a border at all.

Amestris once celebrated the annexation of Ishval, claimed the Ishvalan people as their own whether they wanted to be or not. The open border was a rarity for Amestris, which is a country of walls and fences if ever there was one. Amestrians have always been distrustful of those who don’t look like them, sound like them, think like them. The official line is that this national unity gives them strength, which is certainly needed in a country younger than any other, fragile and surrounded by enemies on all sides.

Amestris has suspicion woven into its very being.

Doctor Marcoh, the Crystal Alchemist, just wants to go home.

He’s not surprised they built a wall, not a literal fence across the expansive desert, yet dangerous still. The land on either side of the narrow road is littered with buried mines. Searchlights sweep over the desert sands. He stands outside the edge of their range, more than a mile from the guard post. The patrols come through at random intervals, no less frequently than once every half an hour, a jeep full of well-armed men who had once been Marcoh’s allies.

If he tries to cross the border, he’ll need papers: official military orders. Which he obviously doesn’t have. Desertion is a capital offense. If the border guards suspect he’s a soldier, they’ll send him back to the line. Or, more likely, just shoot him on the spot.

He’s old, though, old enough that most of the kids out here fighting in this hellish wasteland could be his own sons or daughters. Out of uniform, he’s fairly certain no one would look at him and see a military officer. He’s not a fighter. Not even here. He might be able to pretend to be a civilian. But what Amestrian civilian would let himself be caught on the wrong side of this line?

Any inspection beyond the most cursory will reveal the transmutation circle on his palm, identifying him as an alchemist and inviting plenty of questions he has no desire to answer.

He’s spent half the night walking just to get this far, avoiding sentries from his own base camp and then crossing into the no-man’s land, alert to the possibility of an Ishvalan ambush. He holds on to the gun he carries but has rarely fired, but no one has shot at him yet. And by now, he’s more likely to be shot by his own side than an Ishvalan. The war isn’t fought this close to the edge, it’s fought deeper in the desert, where the Amestrian Military pushes further with every passing week.

So Marcoh is in _more_ danger if he tries to go backward, and if he squints he can see that eastern horizon lightening. He won’t be able to hide in darkness much longer.

He has to go forward.

He tries to formulate a plausible story, but even if his civilian clothes and the white armband with its red cross mark him as a non-combatant, he would be subject to the military’s laws even if he _was_ nothing more than a doctor. The Rockbells are proof enough of that. The shock of their deaths at Mustang’s hand still sticks in his throat, rough and jagged, choking him. It was that shock that forced him to shift the idea of deserting to action, made him draw his own line. _No more._

He isn’t sure why this particular murder, when it wasn’t even his finger on the trigger, should prick at his conscience more than all the deaths he has actually caused. Maybe it’s because he had always been able to convince himself that the deaths he caused had a purpose. And they were, mostly, bloodless. Or at least he never had to see the blood. All he had to do was draw a circle.

The Philosopher’s Stone is hidden in the lining of his pants, nestled at his hip. He can feel it pressing into his skin. This one was created in Central City, one of the first. He doesn’t remember when he first realized that the energy of human life could be used to bypass equivalent exchange. That _life itself_ could be the exchange. Who taught him that? Somehow it feels like something he’s always known. He has vague impressions of a woman’s voice, whispering in his ear. He tested the theories on death row inmates, telling himself that if they were going to die anyway it would be a waste _not_ to use them for something that could help and heal. The Philosopher’s Stones were always meant to be used to _save_ lives. 

Criminals gave way to prisoners of war, and Marcoh squirmed but pushed forward anyway. It’s alchemy. You have to give to get. And he watched as the little liquid-red rocks he called healing stones were pulled out of his hands by the generals and called “alchemical amplifiers” instead. And they were used as tools of war. He didn’t voice a protest. What would he say, even if he imagined for a second that anyone in High Command would listen to him?

When Order 3066 sent the State Alchemists to the front lines, they sent him too. He argued, weakly, that his skills weren’t combat-oriented. But they knew what he could do. And the bloodshed in Ishval could be focused toward their twisted ends. More people died in Ishval every _day_ than in his entire cursed career in Central’s hidden laboratory.

 _They were going to die anyway,_ he told himself. The same familiar, sickening refrain.

He sat around camp and listened to the common soldiers wonder at the apparent purposelessness of their orders. He agreed with them, though he said nothing. And he clung to the idea that he could create _some_ kind of purpose out of this mass loss of life.

He was lying to himself. He knew it even then. He was lying to himself because it was the only way he could justify his own continued life. He is the worst sinner in a land full of them. The sands of Ishval soak up blood like water. His stained red stones drink up that death, and he’s complicit.

He won’t be complicit anymore.

He considers, not for the first time, trying to walk across the minefield. Instead, he steps into the searchlight, blinded, hands up.

No one shoots at him, though he can hear the approaching military truck.

The truck stops. A door opens. “Let him up, Dunn, he’s a doctor.”

The searchlight continues its arc and now that the light isn’t directly on him, Marcoh can see again.

“You’re supposed to have an escort, aren’t you?” another voice says. Marcoh shrugs. “What’s your name?”

“Ma- Mauro. Doctor Mauro.”

The border guards are young soldiers, enlisted men, the kind most of the State Alchemists never mix with. They do not recognize him any more than he recognizes them. They glance at each other, uncertain, but the one called Dunn, who sits in the back of the truck as the other drives, reaches out a hand. And Marcoh takes it.

“Where’re you going, Doctor?” Dunn asks.

“I um… we need medicine,” he says. It’s an obvious lie, even if it is true, and he waits for the younger men to call him out on it. They share a look that makes it obvious he isn’t fooling anyone.

“Medicine,” the driver repeats flatly.

Marcoh nods.

“Bullshit,” Dunn spits. “Walking alone in the middle of the night for… how far _is_ the nearest field hospital? It must be miles and miles from here.”

 _It is_ , Marcoh thinks. And he thinks about the stone, and he thinks about his gun, but these two men are just the sentries. The border post will be full of more men than he can kill before they overpower him.

 _Unless you use the stone_ , whispers that unfamiliar, too-familiar woman’s voice in his head. He shakes his head fiercely. This night _started_ with a murder. He won’t kill anyone else.

“Doctor?” Dunn asks quietly.

“I’m fine,” Marcoh insists, although he is anything but.

He sits in a truck with two Amestrian kids who have the authorization - in fact the sworn duty - to kill him as soon as he crosses the invisible but very real line that separates home from hell. Ishval was part of Amestris, for a little while. The same Ishvalans who fight against Amestrian occupation were born citizens of that nation, tied to the dragon banner the same way Marcoh and the young soldiers in the truck are. Til Amestris cut the tie, killed a child, sparked a war. Created a border where there had been none before.

“You don’t have a travel pass, do you, doctor?” the driver asks, looking over his shoulder at Marcoh briefly before turning his attention back to the road. He knows the answer to the question before he asks it, but Marcoh shakes his head anyway. Next to him, Dunn sucks in a breath.

“Where’re you from?” he asks, trying to get a read on Marcoh’s expression. Trying to make a decision, Marcoh supposes.

“New Optain,” Marcoh replies, easily. No one’s cared about his origins for years. After he’s already answered, he wonders if it would have been safer and smarter to lie.

But no one’s shot him yet. And they’re still driving toward the border, not away from it. If he’s perfectly honest with himself, Marcoh has as little to live for in Amestris as he does in Ishval. He has no family, no career to go back to if he runs from his military commision.

He almost changes his mind, almost tells the unnamed driver of the truck to turn around and take him back to the Amestrian line. But he’s too much of a coward for that. So much of a coward that he’ll let these two risk their own lives to cover his escape. If, in fact, that’s what they’re doing. And it sure looks like it is.

He wants to ask them why. He wants to tell them not to. He can’t cross the border without their help, not now. So he keeps his mouth shut.

“How long’ve you been here?” the driver asks him.

“Two years. Two years and three months, if you want specifics.” This time he does lie, and it’s easy. He borrows the date of Urey Rockbell’s conscription. The military needed doctors at the front far before they needed alchemists. He knows what he’s pretending to be. And he’s had enough conversations with the Rockbells to know they were promised a one-year term of service. Because they had a young child. Because the war should never have lasted as long as it has.

And now, fifteen months after they should’ve been sent home, the Rockbells are dead, and the bullets that killed them were fired from an Amestrian gun.

And children like the ones in this truck are fighting for land Amestris doesn’t even want anyway. By the time this war is over, there will be nothing left but sand.

The truck slows at the border. The driver leans his head out to speak quietly to the soldiers stationed there. There are four of them on the ground, more in the guardhouse, Marcoh is sure. He keeps his eyes on Dunn, but the boy seems to be trying to pretend he doesn’t exist.

The truck rolls over the border, keeps going, one mile, then two. It doesn’t stop until they’ve crested a small hill and come over the other side, out of sight of the military guard post. Dunn opens the door. “You sure about this?” he asks, looking at driver and definitely _not_ looking at Marcoh.

“Look at him, man. Guy’s old enough to be my grandfather. He’s served his fucking time.”

Marcoh doesn’t contradict him, doesn’t say thank you, in fact doesn’t say a word. He gets out of the truck and feels the solid ground of Amestris under his military-issue boots, and he decides, right then and there, in the light of the rising sun, to _be_ the doctor these kids think he is.

The Philosopher’s Stone still digs at his flesh. He starts walking.


End file.
